Most people start from the price table when choosing cloud storage. But the price table is the information that goes stale fastest. Promotions, exchange rates and plan overhauls change it within six months.
The criteria that last are elsewhere.
Prices are more similar than you think
As of August 2026, the main prices visible in Korea run as follows. Promotions and plan changes are frequent, so check the official page again before paying.
| Service | Free | Paid examples |
|---|---|---|
| Google One | 15GB | 2TB ₩11,900/month / 10TB ₩59,500/month |
| iCloud+ | 5GB | 50GB ₩1,100/month / 200GB ₩4,400/month / 2TB ₩14,000/month |
| Naver MYBOX | 30GB | Paid tiers by capacity, with a discount for annual billing |
| Microsoft 365 | 5GB | 1TB included with the subscription bundled with the Office apps |
Look at the 2TB tier and the gap between services is a few thousand won a month. Which means this is not something to decide on price. What decides it is the ecosystem you are already in, plus the items below.
The three things that actually differ
1. Are photos kept as originals
The most important item and the one people check last. Policies differ by service.
- Stored as the original: no quality loss. It consumes the full capacity
- Compressed storage option: saves capacity, but it is no longer the original. Once compressed there is no going back
- Delete the original from the device and keep only the cloud copy: convenient, but lose the account and the original is gone too
If photographs are an asset to you, check whether compression happens and how originals are downloaded first. It becomes the decisive difference when you later move to another service.
2. Can you share with family
Family sharing drops the effective unit price sharply. Three things to check.
- How many people it covers
- Whether each person’s storage is separate, or everyone shares one pool
- What happens to the data when a family member leaves
With one shared pool, one heavy user blocks everyone else. Separate allocations are easier to manage.
3. What happens when you cancel
The item you learn about last and that hurts most. The usual handling goes like this.
- When payment stops, your storage drops to the free limit
- Data above the free limit becomes readable but impossible to add to
- After a set period, the excess may be deleted
So it does not vanish the moment you cancel, but there is a defined grace period. It differs by service, so if you plan to move, check it first and schedule accordingly.
Other things to check
- Upload and download limits. Some services cap daily transfer volume or file counts. It catches you during a bulk migration
- Bulk export support. Whether there is a feature to take your account data as a whole, and how many GB the archive gets split into
- Version history and trash retention. How long you have to undo an accidental overwrite
- Share link policy. Whether links can carry an expiry date and a password
- A track record of domestic services shutting down. Consumer cloud services have closed several times. How much migration time was given after the shutdown notice tells you a lot about how a provider handles it
So how do you choose
In order, it comes to this.
- Follow the ecosystem of the devices you mainly use. iPhone only, iCloud; Android and Google Docs at the centre, Google One — for automatic backup and integration
- Check the original-photo policy. Decide up front whether you will use compressed storage
- Work out the effective unit price from whether family sharing is possible
- Do not keep important material in only one place. The cloud is sync, not backup. Delete something and it is deleted on every device
That last item is the crux. Sync and backup are different. Ransomware, or a deletion by mistake, propagates through sync exactly as it is. Material you truly cannot lose is safer with one more copy on an external drive or in a different account.
In summary
- At the 2TB tier the price difference between services is not decisive. It also shifts often with promotions
- What actually differs is the original-photo policy, the structure of family sharing, and what happens after cancellation
- Cancelling does not delete immediately, but there is a grace period. If you plan to move, check it first
- Bulk export and transfer limits only become a problem at the moment you migrate. Look at them in advance
- The cloud is sync, not backup. Deletion propagates to every device
Prices and policies change constantly. The figures in this article are as of 27 August 2026, and each service’s official page should be checked before paying.
Frequently asked questions
Can I get by on the free capacity alone?
If you back photos and video up automatically, generally not. If you work mainly with documents and manage photos separately, the free limit is often plenty. Better to check what is eating your capacity before deciding.
Is it worth spreading across several services?
Adding up free capacity raises the total, but the management cost rises with it. You lose track of what is where, and recovery gets complicated when you change devices or hit an account problem. Picking one main store and limiting the others to specific uses is the practical approach.
Does photo quality drop when I switch services?
If they were kept as originals, they move across as they are. The problem is photos already stored compressed. Compression cannot be undone, so they stay compressed after the move too. Know this before you turn the compression option on.
If it is in the cloud, is it backed up?
No. With a sync service, deleting on one side deletes on the other. You can restore within the trash retention window, but past that there is no recovery. Backup means a separate copy, and the principle for important material is one more copy on physically separate media.
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